Vsevolod Pudovkin (1893-1953)

Pudovkin stands as one of Lev Kuleshov’s most outstanding students, spending his life promoting the workshop’s techniques through his writings and filmmaking. He wrote: “The foundation of film art is editing.”

Born in Penza in 1893, Vsevolod Pudovkin spent his early adult life as a student of physics and chemistry. At the outbreak of World War I he joined the Russian artillery. He was wounded in 1915, and subsequently spent three years in a German POW camp before successfully escaping. After a brief career as a writer and chemist, Pudovkin entered the Russian film industry. Inspired by D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance(1916), he joined the State Cinema school, during which time he served as an assistant on several propaganda films.

In 1922, Pudovkin enrolled as a student at the experimental film lab established by Lev Kuleshov. It was there, under the tutelage of Kuleshov, that he began developing his theories of montage that would influence not only his work, but the film work of several other Soviet directors. When compared to another proponent of montage, like Eisenstein, who focussed on the collision of images, Pudovkin’s editing work is more lyrical, implementing cross-cuts to enhance, but never break up the narrative. Pudovkin was particularly fond of intercutting “passive” close-ups of a subject with evocative shots of dogs and babies, to demonstrate that drama is not in the actor’s performance, but created through the juxtaposition of two images. This can be seen demonstrated in his film Chess Fever (1925), in which he intercuts newsreel footage of a chess master in deep thought with a comedic scenario about a woman driven crazy by her boyfriend’s addiction to the game of chess. Through his use of montage, Pudovkin implicates the unwitting chess champion into the fictional drama.

During the 1920s, Pudovkin produced three masterpiece “docudramas”:Mother (1926), End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm Over Asia (1928). These three films are considered by many to be among the finest examples of Soviet silent cinema. In contrast to Eisenstein, Pudovkin preferred to create scenarios that focussed on the courage and resilience of individuals. One need only look at Mother to see this dramatic concern in action.

As the Soviet film industry moved into the sound era, Pudovkin held on to his theories and practices of montage. While others’ films were slowing down, dilating shot length to accommodate dialogue, Pudovkin’s talkies featured more individual shots per reel than nearly any of his contemporaries.

Pudovkin continued to make films into the 1950s, earning the Order of Lenin and two Stalin Prizes along the way. He passed away in 1953, at the age of 60.